Chapter 461: Evan
When the grey-eyed boy regained consciousness, he was in the middle of a large office, with a desk and couch to the side where the person responsible for knocking him unconscious lounged with a portable game console in his hands.
He could see the rest of the group of 6 busy with other tasks, and it didn’t take long for the silver-haired progenitor to notice him.
"Hey, you’re finally awake."
The silver-haired boy tossed the console in the air, but it never reached the ground. It just hung mid-air, paused in time while he walked forward and sat on a chair that materialized out of thin air.
’I’m not restrained?’
For a moment, he questioned why they didn’t do so, but then remembered that there were two Transcendents within 10 feet of him.
He couldn’t do anything fishy even if he wanted to.
’Besides Artemisia and that other girl, I can’t sense the Existence levels of the others. Meaning they’re all higher than I am.’
"Hello? You there?"
"..."
The Silver-haired boy called out to him with a seemingly concerned expression, but despite that, the grey-eyed boy couldn’t help but feel fearful towards him.
"Did he go unconscious with his eyes open or something?"
Staying silent wasn’t going to help his already precarious situation, so the grey-eyed boy sighed softly before replying.
"...I’m very much conscious."
"Oh, I was worried since you weren’t responding."
After that reply, our resident Progenitor pulled out a bottle of grape wine from his subspace and poured some into two glasses, handing one over to the other boy.
He took a sip before setting down the glass and speaking.
"So, our visitor from somewhere else in time and space. Welcome to Hell."
"Hell?!"
"Nahh...you’re just on a normal Prime World. By the way, I’m Arthur."
Arthur proceeded to introduce the others in the room, with Beatrix pulling a chair over to where Arthur was and sitting beside him while staring at the grey-eyed boy with shiny eyes.
"What’s your name?"
"...Dante."
The boy’s reply was met with confused gazes from both Arthur and Beatrix and just when the boy was about to question why they reacted strangely, Arthur spoke.
"No, it’s not."
"What?"
"Dante. That’s not your name. It’s ’Evan’."
When Arthur said that, the boy’s eyes widened slightly and Beatrix spoke up right after with a light sigh.
"You took ’too long’ to answer such a simple question, so it’s obvious that was a fake name."
Following her words, McEnda who was sitting on the couch behind Arthur spoke without looking at them.
"Besides, we can clearly see it on your status board."
The moment he said that, Alvey, Sigesi and Artemisia simultaneously facepalmed and sighed heavily. Arthur and Beatrix were naturally confused by such a reaction, and Alvey explained before they could even ask.
"Did the three of you not think that the fact that he’s wearing a mask covering half his face and gave you a fake name, means he’s trying to hide his identity?"
Artemisia followed up Alvey’s question with an input of her own.
"For all we know, he may be from the future or something and there may be complications that’d arise if we from his ’past’ get to know certain things about him."
Hearing their words, Arthur, Beatrix and McEnda were silent for a moment as they gazed at each other.
Beatrix then turned towards the boy with a sweet smile and spoke.
"So, Dante..."
"There’s no point using the fake name now, Beatrix."
Artemisia cut her off before she could even say anything further, shaking her head while muttering something under her breath.
Meanwhile, the boy whose name was indeed Evan like Arthur had stated, glanced at Artemisia briefly and Arthur didn’t miss the look that appeared in his eyes when he did so.
’Even though she’s not focusing on him, he’s glanced at Artemisia and Alvey multiple times now.
There’s also the fact that he had a layer of divinity on him, the blessing of a god.
Wherever he’s from...he may know Artemisia and Alvey there...’
While Arthur was thinking that, Sigesi informed Evan that whatever he used to conceal his real status from them, wasn’t as good as the skill he used to conceal his presence earlier.
"If you used that, then maybe these three would not have been able to see through you with a simple appraisal.
Unfortunately for you, your status concealment was not as good and given we’re all higher level than you are, it stands to reason we can see through it.
Besides, we can all infuse Universal Law energy into our eyes so as far as your status wasn’t concealed with the law of Concealment itself...anyone Legendary and above can see through it."
Evan seemed surprised at this, making it evident that he did not know about this weakness of his ability.
"May I ask what this ’Universal Law’ thing you mentioned is?"
"...?"
All eyes looked at Evan with a dumbfounded gaze when he asked this; as if he had just asked the most obvious question in the world.
The silence hung heavy in the air, broken only by the sound of Arthur’s voice.
"You have the power of a Universal Law and you don’t know what it is?"
"I have one?!"
Evan seemed surprised that he had the power of a Universal law and Arthur was once again confused as to how the boy had lived his life not knowing the thing inside his body.
"Dude...I can sense your energy circuits are created with law energy. You have Destruction Law energy..."
When he mentioned ’Destruction’, realisation flashed in Evan’s eyes as he asked.
"You mean the ’World Law’ of Destruction?"
Now it was Arthur’s turn to be confused as he didn’t know what this ’World law’ thing Evan was talking about meant.
Artemisia and Beatrix, however, were not so clueless.
"Oh...that’s a term used on some worlds by Lower Existences to refer to Universal Laws.
Since it was too much of a hassle to explain the true scale of Universal Laws to people in those worlds, that term is used.
They’d figure it out when they become Transcendents anyway."
Artemisia offered an explanation and Beatrix concurred, even citing examples of places where said terms were used.
"In this galaxy, it’s mostly worlds under Aidos’ control that use such a term."
Aidos, the Prime World that Artemisia and Beatrix lived on, was an Interstellar Hegemony on par with Gozon, and like the Demon-Ruled World, they had innumerable planets under their control.
Evan nodded slowly, seemingly trying to process this new information. It was clear that he had a lot to learn, and his usage of that term implied he may be from one of the worlds under Aidos’ control in whatever Time Period he was from.
"You can learn about all of that later, Evan. For now, let’s get back to the important things.
Sorry about blowing your cover, but on the flip side, you still got your mask so we don’t know half of what you look like.
You also aren’t the only ’Grey Eyed Evan’ that exists too..."
When Arthur said that, Evan turned towards Sigesi who had gone back to sorting her documents and asked.
"You’re not gonna tell me they can all somehow see through my mask, right?"
"Don’t give them ideas."
Just as she replied, Artemisa jumped over to where Beatrix was and covered her eyes, much to the white-haired girl’s dismay.
"But why?!"
"I felt you were gonna pry."
While Artemisia and Beatrix were having their little banter, Arthur used sound law energy to mute them before returning to questioning Evan.
"So, why did you come here from the future?"
"I don’t think I said I came from the future."
Evan was evasive about his answer but Arthur silently raised his hands and removed the contacts he was wearing, allowing the other boy to see his heterochromatic eyes as he spoke.
"I have a Pseudo-Authority in the law of time. I can literally see that you’re from the future.
At least 1000 years into the future.
I should be able to tell what time period you came from up to 1000 years, but I can’t. This means you’re from outside that range."
His explanation made Evan question how broken Pseudo-Authorities could be for a moment before he finally gave a reply.
"I don’t know."
"What?"
"I didn’t come here on purpose. I was forcefully tossed here."
Evan’s reply was certainly not one Arthur or any of the others had expected to hear. They thought he had come to change the past or something but being forcefully sent into the past? Didn’t see that coming.
"As much as I don’t want to say anything, being silent would be unwise in my current situation so I’d talk.
I was fighting a bunch of Fallen Celestial Deities. Trying to get them to stop murdering millions in a bid to regain their power.
Too bad, that didn’t turn out as I expected.
One of them regained his power, and as it turned out, he had a god on his side. A god who used him like a puppet to cast Tier 8 Spatiotemporal Magic on me."
Hearing the level of magic that was cast on him, Arthur rubbed his chin and spoke with a pensive tone.
"Tier 8, huh? We’re looking at a High Tier Deity here... Probably a god King or Queen by this Universe’s standards."
Evan was curious about this ’High Tier Deity’ thing, but he held it back and continued explaining.
"They used the magic, trying to send me somewhere.
However, my companions, with the aid of a "Former Demon King’s" Grimoire, were able to attack him and disrupt the casting of the spell."
The mention of a ’Former Demon King’ got the attention of the Demons present and even Alvey put down his work and visibly showed interest in the boy’s story.
"Unfortunately, it seems incapacitating the ’Caster’, was a bad idea as that made the spell activate automatically.
It then proceeded to send me to what was supposed to be a Random point in spacetime, based on the factors of the energies in the area which it absorbed.
The last bit of information I got, was that these energies were being used by the spell to send me to the ’Furthest point in Time and Space where their factors were closest to each other’, but since I was too busy being frozen in spacetime, I don’t know exactly how much energy it absorbed and whose energy it absorbed."
Evan concluded his story with a bit of helplessness in his eyes. He added that an ally of his was the one who told him the workings of the spell, but even this ’Ally’ didn’t know where he was going to be sent.
"What time period is this? What’s the year?"
"531st Divine Year."
Arthur could almost see the question marks hovering above Evan’s head when he replied to the boy’s query.
"Divine Year? What’s that? First off, what planet is this?"
"Aramis."
"Never heard of it. Though I can’t say I know about many planets either. The most I know is this galaxy is Orithyia and like 3 other planets."
Evan was also clueless about planet Aramis, and though Arthur was not sure if this was truly the case, he didn’t feel like Evan was lying about this.
"How many hours are in a day here? What about days in a year?"
"24/365."
"So, it’s the Standard..."
From his reply, it was clear that whatever World Evan was from, followed the same system.
There were a lot of planets that followed this same Time System. It’s just that they orbited around their stars at varying speeds to synchronize despite their differences in size and gravity.
It was because of this, that the ’General Calendar System’ could be established.
Speaking of General Calendars, Artemisia asked if Evan knew of that system and the boy’s eyes lit up as he gave an affirmative response.
"Oh, that’s good.
We can figure out how far off he is from this. It’s currently Year...what year is it here?"
Arthur had just realised that he had not asked about the General Calendar System of the Valmone Universe and what Year they were currently in.
Given the flow of time here was much faster, he doubted it’d be the same year as the Hell Universe.
"In my home Universe, it was Year 717 when I left."
His light mutter caught Evan’s attention and the boy’s eyes nearly widened out of their sockets.
"You’re not from this Universe?"
"Hmm? Yeah. I’m from a Universe that’s pretty far away, the Hell Universe."
"There really are other Universes!?"
He casually replied to Evan, however, the boy was more concerned about the existence of other Universes than whichever one Arthur came from.
"Yes, there are. But I doubt your story’s gonna scale that far so let’s come back to the topic at hand. The Year."
Alvey, who was finally done with his Summit-related workload for the day, set aside his files as he spoke up.
"It’s currently Year 1054."
Hearing this, Evan’s eyes lit up and he replied.
"Oh, what a coincidence. It was Year 1054 for me too."
When Evan said that, the room went silent and even Sigesi who had half tuned out the conversation looked up at him with surprise in her eyes.
Their expressions made Evan realise that something was off.
Arthur had guaranteed Evan was definitely from the ’Future’. But it was impossible for it to also be Year 1054 in Evan’s future as well.
Unless...
"Evan...what General Calendar were you in?"
"...the 51st."
Evan replied nervously, studying their expressions and reactions to his words. Silence pervaded the area once more until Alvey broke it with his words.
"Each General Calendar lasts 10,000 years and we are currently in the 50th General Calendar...
"?!"
That one line was enough for Evan to quickly understand Alvey’s unspoken words.
Evan was from 10,000 years in the future.
